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When disease is spreading and people are dying, CDC disease detectives search for missing pieces to a 10,000-piece jigsaw puzzle. Learn how CDC’s AMD Initiative helps to solve the puzzle of infectious diseases more rapidly.​

Advanced Molecular Detection (AMD) represents a major enhancement of CDC’s current microbiology and bioinformatics capabilities to find and stop deadly infectious disease outbreaks that threaten every American every day.

AMD at CDC would allow experts in infectious disease laboratory science, epidemiology and bioinformatics to join forces like never before to go from a hunch to certainty in record time to prevent illness and save lives.

The Disease Threat

CDC estimates that 1 in 6 Americans—or 48 million people—get sick from contaminated food each year—costing the United States $77 billion per year in health care treatment, workplace, and other economic losses.

Five killer bacteria (and counting) are nearly resistant to all available drug treatments.

The AMD Investment

Investing in AMD would bring the U.S. public health system a more precise and accurate means to

find smoldering disease outbreaks we are missing now

find disease outbreaks faster to protect communities

stop threats in our food supply

The AMD Initiative

With support through the AMD initiative, CDC will be able to take back the advantage in controlling infectious diseases at national and state levels by:

Reducing diagnostic costs

Locating germs more rapidly

Refining new technologies to work for public health

Training others to use new tools to prevent and stop disease outbreaks

When combined with enhanced laboratory and computing (i.e., bioinformatics) capacities, these new technologies are revolutionizing our ability to detect and respond to infectious disease threats. With full AMD capacity, CDC will be able to detect outbreaks sooner and respond more effectively, saving lives and reducing costs.